Quick Aquareo 5 Question

new boy · 26 Jan 2016 at 21:14

Sorry to start a thread for a small thing, but I'm starting my custom water build tomorrow, and I'm struggling to find an answer to this.

I'm going to be using an Aquareo 5 LT for fan control.

I'm using the official heat sink, not watercooling it.

I'm led to believe its capable of controlling 2 or 3 fans per header, and that using more causes excessive heat because its basically acting like a resistor when lowering the voltage to slow down the fans.

Does that mean that driving PWM fans off the one PWM header causes less heat load (as it doesn't have to lower the voltage)? Is it OK to run 4 PWM fans off that header? Or will it still cause it to overheat?

I have a phanteks PWM hub, but I now understand that it just takes the PWM signal and uses that to alter the voltage that the fan sees, so its pointless using that, I might as well just put the rad fans on the 3 pin headers on the Aquaero instead...

Any advice would be great. I'd rather have the 4 rad fans PWM controlled if possible, but I guess voltage controlled would work nearly as well if not.

EDIT - fans are EKWB Vardar F2-140 (1.57W each according to EK's specs)

Frank Jeagar · 27 Jan 2016 at 12:43

You'll be fine.

My Aquaero 5 has 3 F4-120s on the PWM header and it doesn't go above 44C, it's also fitted with the passive heatsink and is around the back of my motherboard tray so it gets absolutely no airflow either.

You can run quite a few fans off of the Aquaero headers before the temps start to get too hot, and yes the temp increase won't be as high if they are under PWM control because it doesn't have to apply loads of resistance.

Just make sure that you don't exceed the power or current delivery of the header (which 4 f2-140s won't) and you'll be fine

Tealc · 27 Jan 2016 at 12:53

Direct PWM control wastes very little energy and is quite efficient, therefore not a lot of heat is produced. The loading of the fans is taken to the PSU and that can handle hundreds of fans.

As for the Aquareo just check the temperature of the heatsink with your finger. The transistors can go seriously hot before they'll have problems.

doyll · 27 Jan 2016 at 13:16

As Tealc said.

Additional advise is get the passive heat sink for aquaero 5 (new version, height approx. 20 mm). It is part of the aquaero 5 XT and PRO .. and adding it to the LT upgrades it to XT & PRO load ratings. The aquaero has built in safety; if it gets above 95c power output automatically goes to 100% until temp drops below 70c. (4.3 in the manual).

OcUK does not seem to have it, but aqua computer has them in their website shop.